NEW YORK — Lauren Bacall had one condition when the Fashion Institute of Technology recently
wrote to ask whether it could turn hundreds of personal garments she had donated into an exhibit
about her style.

Throughout her life, Bacall never forgot the fashion editor who plucked her from a Seventh
Avenue showroom floor and delivered her to Hollywood at age 19 via the pages of
Harper’s Bazaar.

And, in the spring, the museum — with the help of FIT graduate students learning the work of
curators — will fulfill its promise in a show focused on five designers who helped define Bacall’s
subtle seductiveness and her sophisticated mix of classic femininity and raw masculine authority in
fashion.

Bacall, who died on Tuesday at 89, emerged as a fashion darling of a unique sort.

A model at 16 and later a pal to Yves Saint Laurent and a wearer of designs by Norman Norell,
she wore the clothes — not the other way around.

“She really epitomized this idea of effortlessness,” designer Peter Som said. “It’s like she
never was trying too hard.”

The exhibit on the Manhattan campus will focus on Bacall looks from the 1950s and ’60s. Some of
her Norell clothes will be joined by designs that Bacall donated from Marc Bohan for Christian
Dior, Pierre Cardin, Saint Laurent and Ungaro.

Tonight, Broadway theaters will dim their marquees for one minute in memory of Bacall — a
two-time Tony award winner.